Me phonology. Me morphology. (Lecture 3) презентация

I. Main historical events of the ME period.
II. ME dialects. Rise of the London dialect.
III. ME vowel system. General characteristics.
IV. ME Noun.
V. ME Verbal System

Middle English (1066-1485)
1066 the Norman Conquest.
the Normans were descendants of Danish Vikings who settled in northern France (Normandy) in the 9th and 10th c.
1485 – the accession of Henry VII, the first Tudor monarch

1066 the Norman Conquest
The new overlords spoke a dialect of Old French known as Anglo-Norman.
Anglo-Saxon earls were deprived of property, killed; many French nobles made their home in Britain;

French was used in official documents, court; was the language of upper class
(till the 13th c.)
Latin was the language of the church, of scholarship, and of international communication;
English - at the spoken level (except in court), among lower classes (peasants and slaves) (the 14th c. its thriumph).

1204 King John Lackland lost Normandy to the French;
1215 Magna Carta (Latin “Great Paper”) was written in Latin;
1258 the first royal proclamation of Henry III issued in English since the conquest;
the Hundred Year's War (1337-1453);

The Black Death (the Plague. 1348-1351);
By 1362 CE, the Statute of Pleading (although written in French) declared English as the official spoken language of the courts;
Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400), an English author, poet, diplomat, the father of English language, his narrative Canterbury Tales (1386-1400).

War of the Roses (1455-1485), York (white rose) vs. Lancaster (red rose);
1476 William Caxton brought a printing press to England from Germany. Beginning of the long process of standardization of spelling.

ME dialects. Rise of the London dialect.
the Northern
The Central
the Southern

In England the new standard language which arose in the late Middle Ages was not descended from the West Saxon literary language. It was based on the East Midland dialect (OE Mercian)

ME vowel system. General characteristics.
French influence:
The new diagraphs of French origin: “ou” (ME double), “ie” (ME chief), “ch”. The two-fold use of “g” and “c” owes its origin to French (ME mercy).
Replacement of final –i by –y, which is more ornamental (ME very).

Shortening
the vowels are shortened before 2 consonants, but remain long in other environment. Exception: -ld, -nd, -mb:
OE cēpan – ME kēpen
OE cēpte – ME kepte
OE wēnde – ME wēnde

Shortening
A long vowel is shortened before one consonant in some 3 syllable words.
OE sūþerne – ME suþerne

Lengthening
in the 13th c. short vowels were lengthened in open syllables.
OE talu – tāle
Lengthening affected “a”, “e”, “o”.

Qualitative changes:
Dialect Changes
OE hlāf
ME lāf (Northen)
ME lōf (other dialects)

Y,y (long and short)
OE fyllan
ME fillen (Northen and East Midland groups)
ME fullen (West Midland and South Western)
ME fellen (South-Eastern group)

å (nasal, before “m”, “n”)
OE mån
ME man (Northen, Southern, East Midland dialects)
ME mon (West Midland)

Æ (short)
OE wæs
ME wes (West Midland and South Eastern)
ME was (other dialects)

Æ (long)
OE slæpan – ME slēpen

Levelling of unstressed vowels
All unstressed vowels were weakened and reduced to a neutral /ǝ/, which was denoted by the letter “e”.
OE bindan – ME binden

New diphthongs arose during the transition from OE to ME from vocalisations of OE w, g, h, such as:
ME dai (cf. WS dag),
ME drawe(n) (WS dragan),
ME spewe(n) (cf. WS speowian),
ME saugh (OE seah)

French loanwords supplied the inventory with the two new diphthongs ui, oi
ME puint,
ME royal .
All OE diphthings were monophthongized in ME.

ME Morphology
The ME period is marked by a great reduction in the inflectional system inherited from OE, so that ME is often reffered to as the period of weakened inflections.

Reasons for these changes:
the mixing of OE with Old Norse. Frequently, the English and Scandinavian words were sufficiently similar to be recognizable, but had different sets of inflections (e.g. OE sunu – OScan. sunr);
phonological cause. The loss and weakening of unstressed syllables at the end of words destroyed many of the distinctive inflections of OE (OE endings –an, -on, -un, -um all became –en, which was later reduced to –e.

ME Noun
The number of declensions was reduced to two:
ME Strong declension: Nom. Pl –es; Gen. Sg. –es (OE strong a-stem declension);
ME Weak declension: Nom. Pl. –en; Gen. Sg. –en (OE weak n-stem declension).

In PDE we still have a few relics of other declensions: there are the mutated plurals like feet, geese, mice, and men, where the vowel of the plural was changed by front mutation, and there is no plural ending.

The number of cases was reduced to two: Common and Genitive.

The grammatical categories of the Noun:
the category of case (Common and Genitive);
the category of number (Singular and Plural);
the category of gender (masculine, feminine and neuter)
types of declension: strong and weak.

The category of Gender
a shift from 'grammatical' to 'natural' gender;

The Definite Article
In OE the DA showed three genders (sē masculine, sēo feminine, þæt neuter), and was declined through all four cases, singular and plural.
The form the arose as Late OE þe, which supplanted sē and sēo.
By the end of the ME period we have reached the modern position, in which the is the only form of the definite article.

The Verb
Old English marked two tenses (past vs present), three moods (indicative vs imperative vs subjunctive), and three persons (first, second, third) and two numbers.
4 classes of OE verbs.

The principle of analogy— the tendency of language to follow certain patterns and adapt a less common form to a more familiar one—is well exemplified in the further history of the strong verbs.

Classes of ME Verbs
At a time when English was the language chiefly of the lower classes, it was natural that many speakers should apply the pattern of weak verbs to some which were historically strong.

The two key changes which affected ME verbs:
1) the reduction of inflectional endings,
2) the shift of strong verbs to the weak paradigm.

The ME Verbal System
In ME the system of inflections became much reduced, but a complicated system of tenses is built up by means of the primary auxilaries (be, have, do) and the modal auxiliaries (shall, should, will, etc.).

The Future Tense
The future tense with shall and will is established in ME.
In OE these verbs had the connotation of obligation and desire respectively:
OE ic sceal meant “I am obliged to”
OE ic wille meant “I wish to”.

The Perfect Tenses and Passive Forms
The Perfect tenses with habban or bēon and the passive forms with bēon and weorþan already existed in OE, but they came to be used more frequently in ME.

The Continuous Tenses
The Continuous tenses, formed with be + the present participle, also arise in ME, but are not at all common until the Modern English period.

By the end of ME the perfect, passive, and continuous markings of the verb were all well established, though much less frequently used than today.

ME Syntax
As the inflectional system decayed, other devices were increasingly used to replace it.